Martin Smith, an Emmy-winning correspondent for PBS Frontline, is worried about his retirement  and yours.

In his excellent Frontline documentary airing Tuesday, April 23, on PBS, The Retirement Gamble (check local listings), Smith, 64, says: I started saving for my retirement in my late 20s. But along the way I dipped into my nest egg not once, but several times. And now, like millions of other baby boomers, I, too, dont have enough. Most of my savings went to pay for my kids educations. A divorce and the crash of 2008 didnt help either. Im now planning to work for as long as I possibly can.

Gamble? I wish it was a gamble. At least in a gamble, you have a small chance of winning. Retirement in America for anyone below the age of 50 is called “getting screwed.” No Social Security and there is a good chance that your 401K will be confiscated. All to feed the government spending beast whose appetite is never satisfied.

7
posted on 04/22/2013 2:12:07 PM PDT
by Opinionated Blowhard
("When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.")

Most of us can only dream of earning the salary this guy did for YEARS. I know there are MANY good baby boomers (some fought in the Vietnam War), but I’ll bet this turd got a draft deferrment and spent his years spreading leftist BS to Americans. IF SO, he can kiss my a**.

It was more fun having a good time spending money than saving and exercising discipline in one’s spending habits. Always live below your means and pay yourself FIRST, simply by putting money into an S&P index fund. Not complicated or stressful at all.

Eisenberg didn’t save for his retirement, he saved in a retirement vehicle, but spent it on his kids’ “education.”

So what is he complaining about. No one “has his back?” he says. What the hell? Who is supposed to “have his back”? his fellow citizens who did save now have to take care of him like the grasshopper and ants in the fable? I hate scum like this fellow, seriously.

This article should be read by everyone. Most people are not well prepared for retirement and they will regret it. I think one of the quickest ways to poverty is divorce. So, unless you really detest your spouse, I would recommend separate living arrangements with amity and financial cooperation over divorce. I am too old for that stupidity and drama again. Been there done that. The grass is not greener on the other side. A better retirement strategy is to show your spouse that you love and appreciate them. Cooperation and respect will increase your chances of growing old with sufficient money and agreeable companionship. IMHO.

I have an uncle who, in his late 50s, blew his retirement savings on lavish weddings for his daughters, an expensive cruise, getting the house fixed up and a new car. After he did, he used to laugh about how he'd now have to “work until he dropped.” Now that he is close to retirement age and feeling the effects of age, his tune has changed and he pisses and moans about not having enough on Social Security to live in retirement. I want to say, “No s__t, Sherlock. No one should expect Social Security to be enough and everyone needs to save.” But so many people are like him. They view their savings as money to blow and don't have the discipline to save it for retirement. They expect the government to take care of them in retirement.

17
posted on 04/22/2013 2:28:24 PM PDT
by Opinionated Blowhard
("When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.")

I have heard from one Uber Liberal that worked for an un-named investment house tell me once the numbers were horrible in regards to actual enrollement etc for 401k's etc., Which strikes a hypocritcal chord when their said firm was a big player in that arena, and the number of dollars for all Americans in total are huge. Being the progressive they were they thought defined benefit plans were much better....

Precisely.PBS does nothing without an agenda, and the agenda is always the same Democrat agenda - - turn America into socialist welfare state and thereby consolidate power, as the government-dependent masses will always trade their votes for more "free stuff" confiscated for them from their neighbors by scumbag Democrat politicians.

I knows those who worked for government, retired at 50 years old straight up and now live the rest of their lives getting tax payer pay checks to the tune of 75,000+++ per year. As their wive bitch about it not being enough...yuk yuk..

Those folk who'd worked for government then turn around and tell the private sector peons, who's income has been stagnate for the past 15 years, "Ya should have saved more stupid, ya think social security will carry ya"...Then the private sector tax peon picks up the paper and reads, "Government loots social security fund"

Ya got to love it.

22
posted on 04/22/2013 2:35:31 PM PDT
by dragnet2
(Diversion and evasion are tools of deceit)

If we didn’t have to take care of millions of freeloaders, we could save more for retirement. If this guy doesn’t expose the destructive nature of Democratic policies on retirement savings, he’s nothing more than a fraud, and a tool of the DNC.

David: You know its a very sacred thing, the nest egg, and if you had understood the Nest Egg Principle, as we will now call it in the first of many lectures that you will get, because if we are ever to acquire another nest egg, we both have to understand what it means. The nest egg is a protector, like a god, and we sit under the nest egg and we are protected by it. Without it, no protection. Want me to go on? It pours rain. Hey! The rain hits the egg and pours off the side. Without the egg? Wet. Its over. But you didnt understand it and thats why were where we are.

Linda: I understood the nest egg

David:Please do me a favor. Dont use the word. You may not use that word. It is off-limits to you. Only those in this house that understand the nest egg may use it. And dont use any part of it either. Dont use nest. Dont use egg. Youre out in the forest, you can point - the bird lives in a round stick. And and you have things over easy with toast.

I dont see Social security going away. Politicans will just print more money before they piss off voters. Nevertheless younger people should not absolutely count on it.

Confiscatation of 401K’s? no. They will reduce the lifetime cap. So increasingly you can save less tax free. It will mainly hurt the wealthy. But even if they lower the cap to zero you can still save for retirement the old fashioned way with after tax investments allocated across mix of stocks and bonds. a 40 year investment plan where you invest 10-30% of your salary should work out well even without tax deferral. The problem is most people dont have the discipline

The bigger problem is confiscatory taxation. Gambling is for mathematically challenged fools. Almost no chance to win legitimately. I do it occasionally as entertanment but thats it.

Do what I just did back in February this year. We sold everything in the USA, bought a house and land in San Juan del Sur Nicaragua...bought a 2 bd 2 ba house on 9 acres for $115,000 USD.

We live on much less because the fast paced rat race doesn’t exist, we have a stress free life hanging out on our Pacific beach 20 miles north of Costa Rica with other expats while learning Spanish and helping children learn Enlish. The kids are funny, they notice my Texan accent versus another friend’s who is from England.

Monthly expenses are 15 usd for propane for cooking, 25-40 a month or eclectic (depends if we run the A/C which is rarely needed), 600 for food, rum, beer and restaurants (a month), health clinics are free and routine things like dental cleanings and check ups are very inexpensive.

Couple across the street had their 3rd baby here, total bill...delivery baby care hospital EVERYTHING less than 3000 USD. The hospital is a USA accredited hospital with many expat doctors woirking here.

Ohhh...a Cell phone runs about 20 a month and wifi is 60

Paid my annual property taxes which were 250.00 a year a nd a 10% discount sinice we paid them before march 31.

Many many any young people here from USA raising families and many more retires heading here too.

Top destinations for a stress free and inexpensive retirement are:

Ecuador
Nicaragua
Panama

Little more expensive are
Belize
Costa Rica

Haven’t regretted my move and more family members are joining us after they visit us here and spend time seeing it is just like the 1950s pace of life and sense of community.

The government is about to start a canal from the Caribbean to the Pacific to pick up trade traffic fom Panama. Huge investments going on here.

Will be applying or a dual passport thru Panama in June, will soon travel internationally no longer as a USA citizen being spied upon.

Join the hordes of people who CAN see a way out of the looming disaster that will spread across America in the years to come from government financial bankruptcy, inner city riots and continued terrorism.

Do it while you can, some day the USA will prevent you and your money from leaving.

29
posted on 04/22/2013 3:11:35 PM PDT
by Caliban
(Politics is war conducted by other means...)

Yeah, Kulaks who do all the right things that you name (and I have done every damn single one of them) will be precisely the ones that the freeloaders will eviscerate, precisely because we did the right thing and played by the rules.

Retirement is a gamble for everyone now. Put your money in CDs (as many older folks have done) and the return you get is miniscule and eaten up by inflation, buy stocks or gold, and who knows? Spend it now before the government takes it? No matter what any of us do, we’re tooled.

36
posted on 04/22/2013 3:30:41 PM PDT
by Pining_4_TX
(All those who were appointed to eternal life believed. Acts 13:48)

Federal (CSRS) retirement is 55 if you have enough years in. Yeah, it’s not a bad gig, but the idea behind it was to keep US Civil Servants from being like those elsewhere (like Mexico) who operate on bribes and corruption.

Sounds great - so why are so many South Americans coming to the US?????

Have been retired for a few years and I advise everyone I meet to not retire as long as you are able to continue working. After years of hard work and routines you can get bored in a hurry unless you like joining clubs, playing golf, bird watching, cruises, shopping or gardening. Tried the retirement community - but it was a bad fit for me - so I left. More better for married couples IMHO.

I am lucky to have great, successful busy adult children who live fairly close but since I moved around a lot during my working years I don’t have a neighborhood clan or ‘old friends’ network of shared memories. Money is not the only concern for retirees - there are health issues and loss of routines.....so plan to get involved in some (cheap or money-making) creative hobbies and stay active.

Get a government job...You can retire at 50 or so and live off tax payers money the rest of your life.

Federal (CSRS) retirement is 55 if you have enough years in. Yeah, its not a bad gig, but the idea behind it was to keep US Civil Servants from being like those elsewhere (like Mexico) who operate on bribes and corruption.

Give those in gov lots of money and great benefits in the hopes of limiting corruption from those in government?

Boy that worked out swell...

42
posted on 04/22/2013 4:39:34 PM PDT
by dragnet2
(Diversion and evasion are tools of deceit)

We all got sold a bill of goods in the form of the 401. It traces its roots back to the Rats protecting the little people and punishing the rich. Seems they didn’t like the management getting bigger retirement benefits so they limited them via the 401. Look it up. Somewhere along the way other factors got involved to get rid of the burden of pensions to companies and Wall Street saw a great opportunity to increase revenue by fleecing the unwitting worker who was and still is ignorant of investing.

1. Pension fund managers disappeared and their ability to leverage for better rates of returns. Handling a big block of money with near certain funds flow gave great power and essentially allowed the pension fund managers to get annuities with very good rates of return.
2. IF you can make the traditional mean of about 7% you would be fine but the investment managers (hedge funds before 401s were about nonexistent) cream off 1 to 1.5%. Translated, they are taking about 14% of the gain each year. What was 4% over inflation returns has become about 2.5%... you can’t grow much with that.
3. Saving for retiremnt became a free for all with lots of wasted motion.
4. We have had this discussion here before all with the same result... unless you are part of a government defined pension plan that can get revenue to pay annuities by raising taxes from people who don’t have the means to fund their own retirement.... you are on the work until you die program or leave the country to live in Nicaragua until that system wises up and gets greedy.
5. Right now we aren’t even keeping up with real inflation. The growth in the last year or so has just been working on back filling the huge hole left by the losses of 2008... no real gain at all and we are not even back to the mean and I don’t see us getting there anytime soon or ever.
6. We have saved like fiends for nearly 40 years... mostly between 30 and 50% of gross and we have invested carefully. We can count the days of our vacations in the last 35 years and not use all our fingers and toes and had a close association with all the cars we have bought. Buy and hold have mostly been our plan because market timing responds to things that have already been factored in and generally has resulted in returns 2 to 3% under the buy and hold plan. Still, we suffered ‘87, ‘02, ‘08 and these are all huge holes to dig out of. Strangely, the inflation years of the late 70s and early 80s were some of our best. 20% 5 year zero coupon bonds were hard to beat if you bought them in about ‘82. Wish I had bought more for longer terms. I figure we might be able to harvest 3.2 to 3.5% of the egg per year but there is no comfort in that. It’s pretty clear hardly anyone has the $2,000,000.00 or so they should have to generate what I call a reasonable retirement. If the next 30 years are like the last 30 years disaster will come and we won’t be well enough to survive it and we won’t be back filling the losses to the egg with savings from income of working.
7. If you are on the horse (work) stay on it. If you fall off try to get back on as fast as you can and don’t let it run away. If you do let it run away you will be left behind to fend for yourself. Remember the guy who fell off his camel crossing the desert in Lawrence of Arabia? Lawrence isn’t coming back for you. Nobody has your back because nobody has theirs. It is every man for himself.
8. I told my guys more than 30 years ago when the defined pension plan was replaced with the 401 that we were all being suckered and that we all took a massive pay cut. I was dead right. Even the guy who dreamed up th 401 says it is a dreadful failure.
9. Health care costs and taxes are our greatest threats
10. The historical mean for inflation is 3% driven by the need to motivate people to continue to come to work, you have to provide raises, and 7% is the most prevalent rate of return throughout history, it is the reason we have almost always benchmarked to the alternate investment of NPV7. Strangely, if you manage to build a nest egg big enough for a trust it will run almost forever withdrawing about 4% per year... this is how the gentry of merry olde england lived once they built a fortune. Build a spreadsheet and let it run and see for yourself.
11. Retirement isn’t in the Bible
12. I sure am tired though and many days wonder how much longer I can keep on keeping on. The bad odds are going to catch up with me. I figure that if I am successful and play the odds right I will die wealthy, the kids will get some and the feds will get most of the fruits of my labor. It is damn depressing.

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